Chef 0.7 and 0.8

[Adam Jacob <adam@opscode.com>]

Hi guys!  I wanted to drop a quick email and let you know what's
happening with Chef development.

The 0.7 series added a few major new features, and broke backwards
compatability.  It also took a bit longer to get out than we like,
partly because we were putting in those new features while also
integrating bug fixes and other non-back-compat breaking changes.  We
learned a bit from that lesson, and as such, we're now working on two
branches - the 0.7 "stable" branch, and an 0.8 "unstable" branch.  The
idea is that we'll be shipping regular updates to 0.7, with bug fixes
and general cleanup, while doing the larger, back-compat impacting
changes on 0.8 (and keeping things in-sync during the interim.)

The inimitable Arjuna Christensen is going to be the maintainer of the
0.7 series from here on out.  So when you're resolving bugs, go ahead
and assign them to Arjuna - he's the man whose going to be handling
the merge and code review duties.  He's got better git skills than I
do anyway, and we're super glad to have him working at Opscode (and
holding down the maintainer hat.)

Meanwhile, we're tearing things up for the 0.8 release as we speak.
Some of the things that are coming:

* Replacing OpenID for API authentication with a public/private key
signed request model, a-la EC2.
* A 'finalized' and published REST API, that is more consistent (and
complete) than the current model.

I'll be posting the updated documentation for the future of the REST
API, along with the specifics of utilizing the new auth scheme in the
next few weeks .

Our projected timeline for 0.8 is early August, with a two 0.7 stable
releases in between.

Thanks for being awesome,
Adam

-- 
Opscode, Inc.
Adam Jacob, CTO
T: (206) 508-4759 E: adam@opscode.com